CONGRESS DOES A BETTER JOB OF LOOKING OUT FOR THEIR BUDDIES IN HOLLYWOOD THAN THEY DO FOR YOU AND ME: 10 years in prison for illegal streaming? It’s in the Covid-19 relief bill.
Archive for 2020
December 23, 2020
THE SUBMARINES THAT WANTED TO BE SEEN: U.S. and Israeli Submarine Transits Of Suez, Hormuz Were Signal To Iran.
BYRON YORK: The Democrats’ Eric Swalwell Problem.
House Democratic leaders are trying to keep the espionage scandal surrounding Intelligence Committee member Rep. Eric Swalwell under tight control. But it’s going to be an uphill battle. Republicans are pushing harder and harder to learn more about Swalwell’s relationship with Chinese spy Christine Fang. And the Democrats’ strongest ally — the New York Times, which has averted its eyes and so far refused to publish even one word about the matter — can’t hold out forever.
Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is demanding the FBI brief all members of the Intelligence Committee on what the bureau knows about the relationship between Swalwell and Fang. That relationship began some time after Fang arrived in the U.S. in 2011, before Swalwell was elected to Congress, and continued through 2015, by which time Swalwell had won election to the House and Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi picked him for a coveted spot on the Intelligence Committee.
U.S. authorities had Fang under surveillance and apparently picked up information about her having some sort of personal relationship with a member of Congress — Swalwell. In 2015, the FBI met with Swalwell — again, a member of the Intelligence Committee — to inform him that Fang was a spy. Swalwell says he immediately cut off all contact with Fang, who quickly left the U.S. in mid-2015.
In the next year, 2016, Swalwell started accusing the Trump campaign of collusion with Russia. He proposed a 9/11-style commission to investigate the alleged influence of Russian spy agencies with candidate Donald Trump and top members of his campaign. No one in the public knew it at the time, but Swalwell had just recently had some sort of involvement with a spy himself — one the FBI had actually warned him about. As 2016 and 2017 went on, Swalwell became one of the leading voices attacking President Trump and his Republican defenders on the debunked Russia issue.
Question: By pushing the divisive, destructive — and false — “Russian collusion” narrative, was Swalwell doing the bidding of the Chinese government, as it worked to destabilize the United States?
WE SURE COULD USE ANOTHER FOUR YEARS OF THIS: US strikes at the heart of China’s bid to become a tech superpower.
Washington announced Friday that it will require US exporters to apply for a license before they can sell to Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC). The US government claims that the chipmaker can use its tech to help China modernize its armed forces. SMIC (SIUIF) says it has no relationship with the Chinese military.
But in a statement on Sunday, the company acknowledged that while the restrictions are unlikely to hurt its short-term operations, its loftier goals are in doubt. The new US rules will have “a material adverse effect” on its ability to develop highly advanced chips, it said.
That’s because Washington has said that any request to export tech needed to produce super advanced chips “will be subject to a presumption of denial” — a major problem for SMIC, which uses American-made software and equipment to create its chips.
I guess we’ll see whether or not Joe Biden is the kind of politician who stays bought.
MICHAEL WALSH: Stimulus Bill Stimulates Congress’s Lust for Power.
They call it the “Great Reset,” an opportunistic power grab by the international oligarchy to finally destroy the nation-state in the name of global governance, whose motto, like the Left’s, is “by any means necessary,” which very much includes both COVID-19 and “global warming” in their tactical philosophy. As Matthew 7:16 says, “By their fruits shall ye know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?”
So it is with the thorn-and-thistle-strewn 5,593-page “stimulus” bill, which includes $10 million for “gender programs” in Pakistan and a whole section on “horseracing integrity and safety.” Their contempt for you is a bitter mockery of the Founders’ aspirations to republican democracy, pearls before swine except the “pearls” are faux and the swine are you. Trump should veto it immediately.
This is what comes of a country that purports to be “of laws, not men,” but is in fact a nation of lawyers, not men. Rather, America was first imagined and then created by European intellectuals, artists, statesmen—patriots with both taste and rifles. Men came first, then the laws that they made—not the other way around. That we are “a nation of laws, not men” is one of the stupidest clichés around, as is the idea that America is a “notional” country to which anyone can belong upon a pledge—however dishonestly made—to uphold the Constitution.
On the contrary, the United States of America was founded on the principles of the English and Scottish Enlightenment—settled not colonized (unlike the Spanish possessions in the New World)—with an eye to creating something never before seen in the history of the world: A self-governing land, ruled by neither by pompadoured potentates nor periwigged black robes but by the citizenry.
In other words, we are not subjects of a “notional” nation, but one with a direct, easily provable Anglo-European inheritance. A free country created by free men, who over the course of two and a half centuries have established laws to serve their vision of freedom and liberty within the framework of a Constitution written by dead white male property owners who put their lives on the line for the good of all.
When those laws or the “interpretations” thereof constrain freedom and liberty upon which the country was founded, they can and should be ignored and abolished.
What would the Founders have said to Covid? To panic? To fear? During a yellow fever pandemic, Americans moved our capital from Philadelphia to the new shining city on a hill, Washington. During the darkest hours of the War of 1812, President James Madison and, later, his wife, Dolley, fled a burning White House, taking with her copies of Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of George Washington and the Declaration of Independence. Can we do any less?
Now our elected representatives machinate against us. The Supreme Court, led by the moral and intellectual weakling John Roberts (a Bush appointee, of course), reject the plain language of the Constitution in order to preserve its “institutional legitimacy”—never mind the plain language of Article Three, which even a lawyer ought to be able to comprehend, but willfully won’t.
As Michael writes, “In short, they laugh in our faces and ask us to beg for more. And then they leave $600 on the dresser for us to shut up and go away. There’s a word for people who take that deal. Are you one of them?”
Apparently, President Trump isn’t: Trump Blasts Democrats for ‘Wasteful’ COVID Bill, Calls Out Its Most Ridiculous Spending, Threatens Veto.
MARK JUDGE: Who ordered the “code red” on me?
WHEN YOUR KID SAYS CAPITALISM IS GREED: Colson Center’s Brook McIntire offers three handy facts about free enterprise that will make the average college econ prof instantly turn apoplectic. Wouldn’t you love to be there to see it!
December 22, 2020
SEEMS FAIR. I MEAN, THEY’VE OBVIOUSLY FAILED AT THEIR JOBS. Commission Votes to Dissolve Board of Health: Even as Knox County COVID cases mount, the body that has guided the pandemic response may lose its authority.
WELL, HE’S RIGHT: Trump rips coronavirus stimulus bill as disgrace.
MARK CUNNINGHAM: De Blasio’s push for new ThriveNYC waste is latest low of his fake mayoralty. It’s not “waste.” It’s theft.
OPEN THREAD: Be not afraid.
TRUMP ANNOUNCES SLEW OF PARDONS.
Among those pardoned by the president are George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to the 2016 Trump campaign who pled guilty to lying to the FBI during the Russia investigation, and Alex van der Zwaan, a Dutch lawyer who pled guilty and was sentenced to jail for lying to investigators during the Mueller probe.
The president also pardoned four Blackwater guards convicted of killing Iraqi civilians and former congressmen Duncan Hunter of California, Chris Collins of New York, and Steve Stockman of Texas.
Curiously, unlike the last three Democrats in the White House, no terrorists on the pardon list, so far.
HUNTER BIDEN’S FAMILY NAME AIDED DEALS WITH FOREIGN TYCOONS:
Hunter Biden ramped up business activities with European and Chinese tycoons as his father exited the vice presidency four years ago. For him it was a potential path to income; for the tycoons, the Biden family name promised to burnish their reputations.
The dealings got the younger Mr. Biden a discounted stake in a private-equity firm in China and consulting arrangements with a Romanian property magnate and overall allowed him to maintain a globe-trotting lifestyle, according to interviews, documents and communications reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. A Chinese energy tycoon gave Mr. Biden a 2.8-carat diamond, and entities linked to him wired nearly $5 million to Mr. Biden’s law firm, according to an investigation by Senate Republicans.
These arrangements now loom over President-elect Joe Biden. A federal criminal tax investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings is under way, with findings potentially trickling out in coming months. His business ties to well-connected people in China and other places could add to scrutiny of foreign-policy decisions taken by the Biden administration over possible conflicts of interest. All are likely to provide ammunition to Republicans.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), who has led the Senate Finance Committee whose Republican staff helped investigate Hunter Biden, has said he would continue to look into what he says are possible counterintelligence and criminal concerns related to Mr. Biden’s business dealings.
“Based on all the facts known to date, Joe Biden has a lot of explaining to do,” Mr. Grassley said recently.
I’m sure Biden considers Grassley to be a one horse pony, as well.
IF YOU LIKE YOUR FRACKING, YOU CAN KEEP YOUR FRACKING: Biden ‘czars’ spark GOP fears of unchecked climate agenda.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Future Biden Education Secretary Oversaw Creation of Critical Theory Class for High Schoolers.
FLASHBACK: How the Ruling Class Rules.
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! “Joe Biden laughs when Fox News’ Peter Doocy asks if he still thinks the allegations against Hunter Biden are Russian disinformation: ‘Yes, yes, yes. God love you, man. You’re a one horse pony.’”
THE EXODUS IS HERE: Your Christmas Present: Our Political Leaders Are Killing Off New York City.
Up in the state legislature, the Democrats have just increased their majority in the state Senate. All the buzz is about a new “millionaire’s tax” of several additional percent for those with annual income exceeding $1 million. And in New York City, Mayor de Blasio on December 18 held a news conference where he blurted out these words:
“I’d like to say very bluntly our mission is to redistribute wealth,” the mayor said. “A lot of people bristle at that phrase. That is, in fact, the phrase we need to use.”
The purpose of the “redistribution of wealth” is supposedly to fix the City’s schools. Those schools currently spend about $28,000 per year per student on K-12 education, which is well more than double the national average. As usual, de Blasio takes no responsibility for the failure of New York City schools to achieve even near-average results for almost triple the cost elsewhere in the country, and just demands more and more and yet more money.
They are doing their very best to kill off our city.
And they’re getting plenty of help: Foreign and domestic (Antifa) terror threats continue against police in NYC.
All of which is contributing to this headline: New York Had Largest 2019-20 Population Decline of Any State.
Socialism: If you build it, they will leave.
SMALL SIGNS OF SANITY IN PACIFIC NORTHWEST: Antifa Rioter Tries to Weasel Out of Andy Ngo Lawsuit. This Judge Isn’t Having It.